Catalog Bulk Purchase Option

[dljoyork]

Has anyone tried using the new bulk purchase button?  I'd like to suggest it to my customers who want to pay once for a group of students.  I am wondering if the students will end up registered and enrolled just like with individual purchases.  I tried to test it, but without actually making the purchase, I couldn't see how the full process went.  It would be nice if Canvas would make a screencast showing the process.  

[jsowalsk]

@zsgoreczky would you be able to help with this?

[zsgoreczky]

Hi @dljoyork 
Bulk Purchase and Enrollment works with free listings as well. I recommend testing it with such a listing so you can go through the entire flow. Students who are invited to enroll in a specific listing receive an email about the invitation. Clicking the main call to action button in the email takes them through the existing enrollment process. If they don't have a Canvas account yet, they are asked to register one. If they do have one, they are asked to login to it. 
Here is an article about the purchase flow:https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Canvas-Catalog/How-do-I-purchase-multiple-enrollments-in-a-Catalo...

Let me know if you have any additional questions about this feature. 

[jsowalsk]

Thank you @zsgoreczky for your help with this. Will there ever be a sufficient way to test bulk purchase with fee-based listings in our beta instance? The reason why I am asking is because it seems pretty risky to push out a feature without testing it to its full potential. 

[jsowalsk]

I see we have our payment gateway set up in Beta but if we go through and pay for this transaction will it work effectively? We only have a payment gateway set up in two subcatalogs in Beta. Will there be any issues during the refresh of our Beta instance and the payment gateway will no longer work?

  

[zsgoreczky]

Hi @jsowalsk As you mentioned if a Beta Catalog has a payment provider configured, then you can test the payment flow. For your institution you have a payment provider configured for 14 different Beta catalogs / sub-catatlogs. I'm happy to send you these 14 catalogs via your CSM. Beta refresh has nothing to do with a Catalog's configuration, the majority of your payment provider configurations is from 2017 and as you can see the numerous Beta refreshes we have had since then didn't change anything. 

[jsowalsk]

@zsgoreczky Thank you, in our production instance all of our catalogs are set up with a payment provider. Why are there only 14 in Beta? I got told by my previous CSM that only two subcatalogs were actually active. Let me know if this is not true. So, to confirm, a refresh of Beta will not impact the payment gateway? Previously, it has and we get an error and the subcatalogs need to be reconfigured with the payment gateway.

[dljoyork]

Canvas support did make me some screencasts showing more of the process. These are very helpful and I'll share them below.  However, I'd still like their documentation people to make a Video Guide for "students" who want to use the bulk purchase option, as it's a complex process.

Below is what they sent me.

https://nam04.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.screencast.com%2Ft%2FI2EpzLLOp...

https://nam04.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.screencast.com%2Ft%2Fdst4FbPFE...

Just to recap what is shown in the video...

A user will see a bulk enrollment icon when clicking into a catalog course. This option will be grayed out if no more seats are available to be claimed. If there are seats available for claiming, the user can click into the bulk enrollments icon.

The user can select how many seats they'd like to claim. They can then claim these seats.

If already logged into their account, the purchaser will be taken to a confirmation page where they can review their purchase and then invite students to pick up one of their seats.

If not, the purchaser will be prompted to log into their account or create a new one, and then they will be taken to the same confirmation page.

An email is sent to the purchaser to confirm their purchase, shown here:

https://nam04.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.screencast.com%2Ft%2FcDVtVE1WA...

The invite page can be accessed through the Purchases and Enrollments area or it can be accessed directly from the confirmation page. There, the purchaser will type in the student's email addresses one by one and invite them.

The invitation email that students will receive looks like this:

https://nam04.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.screencast.com%2Ft%2Fb1ETbB8IR...

[dljoyork]

@zsgoreczky

I'm trying to troubleshoot a bulk enrollment problem, but I don't seem to be able to see much in the Catalog admin panel.  All I can see is that one user made a bulk purchase.  I'm trying to help one of the students she enrolled get access to the course, but I can't even find that student.  Any suggestions?

Thanks,

Joan

[KataKeri]

@dljoyork Hello, let me chime in - I'm an associate, working with Zsofi.

So the problem is that the student got an invite, but does not able to enroll? Or the student enrolled but does not have access to the course?
The purchaser should be able to see this student in their admin panel, where she sent the invite to enroll - and re-invite the student if that's the problem.

[JenniferJWhite]

Hi, @KataKeri  - I know it's been a while since your reply was posted on this topic, and that you're about to head on to new responsibliities, but I just wanted to echo Joan's issue with the inability to find invited students until they enroll.  As admins, we will not know who the purchaser is for a given student, and we will not be able to find that student in any Analytics *until* the student enrolls.  But if a student has a problem enrolling comes to a Catalog admin for help, the admin cannot help them, as they will not be able to see who the purchaser is. We cannot assume that the student will know who the purchaser is and can just simply follow up with that person. Even if the student receives the invitation to enroll, this invitation is sent from Catalog -- there is no mention of who invited the student.

Admins really need a way to tell who has *invited* which students to which course -- not just which students were able to enroll successfully.  Invitations could conceivably come from anyone, but admins have no way to track invitations from others -- it is onlyafter a student enrolls that we can see info in analytics.

Maybe something for the new PM to look into for us!  🙂

[KataKeri]

hey @JenniferJWhite thank you for providing more information on the matter! I will definitely forward this to the new Catalog PM to look at. 

[AmyMerk1]

I'd like to chime in that this is a big problem for us too, not only for the reasons Jennifer has stated, but because we've had support requests from bulk purchasers to help with their invitations, but our abilities are hampered because we aren't able to see their purchases and enrollments page. Having this info would be a big breakthrough for our processes, as some of our university units offer a "concierge" service using the bulk purchase feature where they send out invites to email addresses submitted by institutions that prefer to pay the units directly. They frequently run into snarls with that process that we struggle to help them with due to lack of visibility on our end.

[KataKeri]

@AmyMerk1 Understood, thanks for the further context. 

[jsowalsk]

@dljoyork I just wanted to make you aware of this issue in case you didn't know: https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Known-Issues/tkb-p/issues?label=Catalog&sort=&status=